[en] The report of verbal descriptions of a culprit by adult witnesses may impair their later identification ability, a phenomenon known as the “verbal overshadowing effect (VO)” (Schooler & Englster-Schooler, 1990).
In spite of a large body of literature on the suggestibility of children testimony, only one study has examined whether descriptions also impaired children’s identification abilities in a single group of children (8-9 years old) and no evidence of VO was found (Memon & Rose, 2002). However, some procedural details were not controlled in this experiment and the absence of a control adult group did not allow determining whether the procedure used was able to induce a VO effect.
Hence, 2 experiments were conducted on several groups of children (7-8, 10-11, 13-14 years old) and adults to determine the influence of development on the VO effect. Overall, a VO effect on face identification was found in both experiments. The quality and influence of descriptors across the ages were also examined.